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James Marriott's The New Dark Ages warns that screen culture is eroding long-form reading and liberal democracy, drawing on Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan.
James Marriott's book The New Dark Ages argues that the rise of screen culture is destroying literacy and liberal democracy, potentially ushering in a second feudal age. Published in 2025, the book expands on Marriott's viral Substack essay from September 2025, The Dawn of the Post-Literate Society, which contended that just as print ended feudalism, screens are now undermining democratic societies.
Marriott's Warning on Literacy Decline
Marriott, an Oxford-educated columnist for The Times, contends that the ability to read long and complex texts, once a widespread skill, is becoming a rare and esoteric accomplishment. He draws on thinkers like Walter Ong, Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, and Elizabeth Eisenstein to trace how print culture fostered logical arguments and borderless reach, enabling the rise of liberal democracy. Now, he warns, the screens in our pockets filled with degraded content are bringing back amnesia, illogic, and tribalism.
The book itself is a concise, well-written antidote to this degradation, though some critics suggest Marriott may be overly optimistic about print culture, which also produced Mein Kampf and Auschwitz alongside Madame Bovary and the NHS.
Impact on Mainstream Fiction and Reading Habits
Observers note that mainstream fiction is becoming increasingly overexplicit, telling readers what it is doing in repetitive, simple strokes to accommodate shortened attention spans. This trend appears in literary fiction by authors like Maggie O'Farrell, Douglas Stuart, and Barbara Kingsolver, in middlebrow best-sellers by Florence Knapp and Rebecca Kuang, and in popular fiction by Andy Weir and Freida McFadden.
Such overexplicitness mirrors second-screen entertainment, similar to streaming TV shows that restate plots because viewers are also looking at their phones. Obliquity, irony, and the long sentence are becoming the domain of a dwindling group of artisans, endangered like red wolves or Siberian tigers.
Cultural and Political Implications
Marriott's thesis is not entirely original; Jeff Jarvis presented a more uplifting version in The Gutenberg Parenthesis in 2023, and both draw on the same intellectual foundations. However, Marriott articulates something useful about the current age of flux. He argues that tech companies are wiping out literacy and middle-class jobs, potentially leading to a new feudal age or a political era beyond our imagining.
In an age dominated by figures like Elon Musk and Mr Beast, where honourable human qualities are hourly forgotten and traduced, the habit of reading good books needs all the talented defenders it can find. To be a reader of good books in the 21st century, some suggest, is to be a conservative in the strict sense of preserving what is good from the past.
James Marriott The New Dark Ages Literacy Decline Screen Culture Liberal Democracy Print Culture Mainstream Fiction
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